Protest Expected At Kelly Lecture

Students and community groups plan to demonstrate outside the Brown University lecture hall where New York Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly is slated to speak this afternoon.

Kelly has overseen New York’s controversial “stop-and-frisk” policing strategy. The demonstrators say they believe the policy amounts to racial profiling, and they are also angered by what they call Kelly’s “widespread surveillance” of the Muslim community.

A federal judge found stop-and-frisk unconstitutional over the summer, ordering a federal monitor to oversee major reforms at NYPD. The judge also accused New York City officials of ignoring a troubling pattern of racial profiling.

But supporters of “stop and frisk,” including New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg have credited the policy with reducing crime rates in New York.

Kelly is delivering the Kreiger Lecture at Brown’s Taubman Center for Public Policy. His talk is titled “Proactive Policing in America’s Biggest City.”